Best Stock Broker For Short Selling for 2026

What is Short Selling?

Short Selling is when a trader borrows an asset to sell it and buy back later at a lower price. These kinds of positions can be opened in the stock, Forex, futures and other markets.

Under the rules of financial markets, traders cannot trade assets or contracts they don’t own. Short Selling involves a trader borrowing an asset from a broker and selling it at a high price. Then, they wait for the price to fall. Closing the position, a trader buys back the asset at a low price. The difference between the high price of sale and low price of buying is the profit a trader makes. If the price of an asset increases instead of falling, a trader suffers a loss.

Short selling occurs when the price of an asset is expected to fall. However, in the case of stocks, not all brokers allow short selling. Therefore, if your trading strategy includes short selling, it is important that you choose a broker that provides such an option.

Best Stock Broker for short selling: Investment Programs

Earning passive income is just as important for traders as earning profit by actively trading. Therefore, it is important to consider investment instruments offered by the company. There are different investment programs and their choice strongly depends on a specific broker. TU analysts have prepared a review of investment programs of the 5 best brokers.

1

eToro - Investment Programs

Investment Programs, Available Markets, and Products of the Broker

With investment offers of eToro, the broker’s clients can earn passive income without trading financial instruments on their own. It is also possible to earn additional income on the partnership program. 

Smart Portfolio, CopyTrader and Popular Investor

eToro specializes in social trading, which means it offers the best conditions for comfortable work. Not only successful traders, but also novice investors with this broker. At the moment, the following investment solutions are available on eToro:

• Smart Portfolio. These are long-term investment portfolios that consist of various assets. The portfolios are built by investment experts, who are also involved in their management and rebalancing.

• CopyTrader. This is a service for copying trades of successful traders. An investor who subscribed to a strategy pays the standard trading fee. There are no additional fees. The minimum amount for copying a position is $1.

• Popular Investor. This is an offer for traders who have traded financial instruments successfully for at least 2 months and are prepared to offer their strategy for copying by other eToro clients. There are 4 levels available: Cadet, Champion, Elite and Elite Pro with different percentages of profit.

Every investment program of eToro implies a deposit of a certain amount to the trader's account. In order to start working with Smart Portfolio, you need to deposit at least $500. The minimum account balance for the Popular Investor program is $1,000. In order to connect to the CopyTrader platform, you need $200 or more.

eToro Partnership Program: 

• eToro shares with partners a part of its income from the new users who opened an account with the broker using a referral link. The rewards depend on the CPA indicators. There are three commission plans with monthly rewards of $100, $200 and $250.

The broker starts paying the rewards only after receiving at least $10 in fees from the referred users. A partner can use various methods of promotion – publish direct links and banners, send newsletters and ads by email, etc.

2

CapTrader - Investment Programs

Investment Programs, Available Markets and Products of the Broker

CapTrader offers solutions not only to traders, but only to investors. Specifically, the company’s clients can use managed accounts (MAM). The company offers MAM accounts to investors with different risk levels, minimum investment amount, types of used assets and trading instruments, etc. The clients of the company are also awarded additional bonuses through referring new traders.

MAM accounts – passive income solutions

CapTrader offers its clients investment accounts managed by the company’s specialists. They are available to all broker’s clients, who deposit the required minimum amount. There are two types of MAM accounts on the platform:

• Rating A. The minimum investment amount for opening this type of trading account is EUR 10,000. The expected return on this account type is 10-20% per annum. The key instruments to earn the return are options, benchmark – EuroStoxx 50. This type of MAM account has been available since 2011.

• WHITE². The minimum investment amount for this type of trading account is EUR 20,000. The expected return is 10-20% per annum. The key instruments to earn the return are options, stocks, ETFs.  Benchmark – S&P 500. This type of MAM account has been active since 2017.

The clients get direct access to positions and trades via the trading platform. The commission on MAM accounts ranges from 10% to 20% of the return depending on the risk level chosen by you.

CapTrader’s partnership program

• CapTrader partnership program envisages financial bonuses for referring new clients to the platform. In order to participate in the program, a trader needs to fill out and submit a corresponding application.

According to the conditions of the program, a client is considered referred once he/she registers and funds the account. If the referral deposited EUR 2,000 to the account, the user who referred him/her will be credited EUR 74. For deposit amounts from EUR 2,000 to EUR 25,000, the premium is EUR 150. If the initial deposit exceeds EUR 25,000, the user who referred the new client will be awarded EUR 250.

3

Interactive Brokers - Investment Programs

Investment Programs, Available Markets and Products of the Broker

Interactive Brokers is an automated electronic global broker. Investments are possible by investing in stocks, bonds, and ETFs, earning dividends from them, or subsequent sales at a higher price. Interactive Brokers provides individual and institutional investors with access to investment products across 160 exchanges from a single unified platform, including stocks, options, currencies, bonds, funds and more. Investors can fund and trade accounts in up to 28 currencies and use powerful trading platforms and tools. In addition, there are many services and features that cater to investors of all abilities worldwide. Examples include:

Overnight Trading Hours: This service currently lists over 10,000 US stocks and ETFs plus US Equity Index Options. Clients can now also trade US Treasuries, global corporate bonds, UK gilts, and European government bonds for 22 hours per day.

MultiSort Screener: Clients can easily find stocks that best match their strategies across a universe of over 70,000 stocks worldwide.MultiSort enables users to sort data using multiple factors simultaneously. This is essential for traders and investors who need to evaluate diverse information, such as fundamental data, past performance, and technical indicators. MultiSort makes it easy to input multiple preferences and quickly returns the most relevant results.

Option Lattice: Option Lattice is a graphical options chain display highlighting potential outliers in key metrics, such as Implied Volatility, Open Interest, Volume, or Last Price. Users can easily switch between categories for a comprehensive view and look back at the historical performance of the underlying for a more informed analysis.

Fractional Shares Trading: With fractional shares investors can divide investments among more stocks to achieve a more diversified portfolio, and put small cash balances to work quickly to maximize potential returns.

Interest on Instantly Available Cash: Clients can earn up to 3.83% on uninvested cash balances above USD 10,000.

Fundamentals Explorer: Free fundamentals data for over 30,000 companies worldwide.

Options Wizard: Helps investors learn about and start trading options.

PortfolioAnalyst: This free tool for clients and non-clients allows investors to consolidate, track, and analyzetheir portfolios. Recently added features include Retirement Planner to help investors better understand their retirement outlook and a Budgeting Tool which tracks and categorizes spending to help a client budget more effectively.

AI-powered News Summaries: Eligible clients can access concise summaries of news articles, streamlining insights from leading providers and making it easier for investors to stay informed; currently only available for eligible clients of the Interactive Brokers affiliates in Canada, the UK, Ireland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, and Japan

Recurring Investments:Setup and execute a predetermined investment strategy by automatically investing funds on a recurring schedule.

Interactive Brokers affiliate program

Commercial referral program. The partner's challenge is to attract new customers using a unique link, and the partner shall get a fixed amount of $200 for each client attracted.

Referral program with extras. The partner's challenge is the same as in the commercial referral program. The only difference is that now the referrer (partner) gets a percentage of the trading commission that the client invited pays to the broker. Payments are made for 3 years.

There is no need to be a client of Interactive Brokers or be an active trader to participate in the affiliate programs. It is enough to meet the broker's requirements for partners.

4

Wealthsimple - Investment Programs

Investment Programs, Available Markets, and Products of the Broker

Wealthsimple offers passive investment through investments in managed portfolios. They are formed based on the data specified by the investor, such as objectives, time horizon, and the customer’s attitude toward risk. 

Investing on autopilot: A picture-perfect way to get passive income on the stock market

Wealthsimple offers its clients well-balanced portfolios with different risk levels. Each of them is diversified and contains from 10 to 15 funds in a certain segment. If the market situation changes, portfolios are rebalanced automatically. The investor does not participate in this process. Wealthsimple offers the following portfolio types:

• Socially (SRI) and non-socially responsible investing portfolios. The fees charged by ETF managers of SRI portfolios range from 0.22% to 0.32%. The minimum investment in SRI funds is £5,000. Management fees for non-socially responsible investing ETFs are 0.18-0.2%, and the investor may invest any amount.

• Conservative, Balanced, Growth. These are classifications of portfolios based on degrees of risk. The investor himself determines the permissible level. Each investor can have several portfolios with different risk profiles.

To invest in Wealthsimple managed portfolios, you need to answer several questions in the registration form. Based on this data, the algorithm will propose the optimal portfolio for you. The investor may agree to invest in it, apply for another portfolio or contact the company's specialist to create a personalized portfolio.

Wealthsimple’s affiliate program:

• Referral Program. For each friend who opens and deposits £5,000 or more through a referral link, the existing client receives free asset management of £5,000. The referral receives the same remuneration.

Thus, the broker does not charge any fees for its services to the participants of the referral program for 12 months.

5

M1 Finance - Investment Programs

Investment Programs, Available Markets, and Products of the Platform

M1 Finance works to provide investing conditions specifically for self-investing and does not offer its clients automatic investment programs.

M1 Finance’s affiliate program

• Refer a friend. Participation in the affiliate program allows affiliates to receive $75 for personal investment account. To do this, an M1 Finance client needs to open a personal investment account, replenish a trading account with the minimum amount following the type of account, and then receive a referral link and share it with friends. For each referred friend who opened an account with the company and replenished it to the required minimum, a bonus will be credited to the partner's account, and the invited client will also receive a financial bonus.

The new user must open an account and make a deposit of at least $100 within 14 days of opening the account so that both of you can receive the bonus. The affiliate program does not limit the number of users you can invite.